He is the 6ft 3ins hunk of British tennis who has been dazzling at Wimbledon between cutting a dash on the catwalk. Yet those who know him best say it is a minor miracle Jack Draper has reached such a towering physique. Until a late teenage growth spurt, Draper was at least a foot smaller than many of his opponents.
Justin Sherring, his coach at the time, explains how Draper’s lack of childhood height has turned out to be his superpower.
“It’s not about how big you are externally – it’s the size of the dog inside your soul,” Sherring tells Telegraph Sport. “I think that’s what has brought him through so far. The spirit is the most important aspect of player development.”
Sherring says Draper’s “animal-like” instincts – honed from years of fighting for every point against bigger opponents as a junior – will come to the fore in Thursday’s Battle of Britain against Cameron Norrie. The pair are in a tug-of-war to be British No 1, but Draper is currently racing ahead of his rival. He had first claimed domestic top spot last month after lifting his maiden title, the Stuttgart Open, on the ATP Tour. At the Queen’s Club Championships, he then quashed Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets to cement his status.
The in-form player of the moment, who supplements his bumper recent earning with a part-time modelling contract with IMG, appears ready for take off. “He is on the cusp of being a UK sporting superbrand with huge potential earnings, but not quite there,” explains the leading brand expert Marcel Knobil. “A few majors and an increase in charisma that often accompanies that, and Draper can look forward to an easy tenfold increase in his current earnings of around £2.4million.”
Draper has signed deals with Dunlop, Nike and Vodafone but resists talk of lofty ambitions for now. “My goal is to fulfill my potential of where I can go and just enjoy the process,” he said ahead of the Championships.
Sherring, who coached him for more than a decade from the age of five, explains how a “step by step” mentality has been implemented by his parents. Tennis runs in the blood of Sutton-born Draper, who went to independent schools Parkside and Reed’s in Cobham, Surrey. His mother Nicky is a coach and a former junior champion who trained him as a young boy with Sherring. His uncle Jonathan and brother Ben, who is now his agent, also played at elite levels while his father Roger Draper was chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association from 2006 to 2013.
In his earliest years of tennis, he also practised with his grandmother Brenda Entract, a former tennis coach and player. Her diagnosis with Alzheimer’s in 2015 aged 70 has added a bittersweet dimension to Draper’s rise in the professional game. “Nana was one of my biggest supporters growing up and I have always been very close to her, but this is a disease which completely takes away the person you knew,” Draper has said.
“My Pa, who is Nana’s main carer, still brings her to the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton to watch me train, but she doesn’t know who I am. And if my tennis matches are on TV, he will tell Nana it’s me but it doesn’t register with her anymore.”
Sherring explained how Draper’s mother, in particular, had equipped him well for life’s challenges, however. “Look, I just want him to do well at school,” she would tell Sherring, who added: “It was all very low key. And when I took him away, she’d make sure that he learned 10 new words every day on his English vocab. It was just very normal.”
Draper’s lack of height, however, would ensure he was a fighter. “You focus a lot more on being tough, pushing hard, working hard, because you don’t have the early advantage of being sort of like 6ft 2ins at 14,” said Sherring. “Jack was one of the smallest guys around. So he just had to try extremely hard.
“Things like that are actually a bit of a blessing to later, and I think that’s what got him through his first round [a five-set success against Swedish qualifier Elias Ymer]. A toughness, a grit, a determination, a competitiveness which was all too obvious at a younger age. He was just an animal then.”
After Draper beat Alcaraz at Queen’s, there were no outlandish celebrations. Instead, he invited Sherring to watch Euro 2024 matches with him.
“It’s great to have the distractions,” said Sherring, also referring to Draper’s modelling deal. “He’ll get used to seeing his face out and about being a bit of a pin up boy. It can only help in the all-encompassing world of tennis.”
